Facebook won $711 million in a lawsuit against a notorious spammer. Don’t cheer too hard, though. The same spampresario owes MySpace $234 million for the same thing.

Sanford Wallace, the man they sued, has been spamming people for as long as the Web has existed, and before that sent junk faxes.

Court documents indicate that Wallace and an associate who was later dropped from the case spammed Facebook users with phishing messages. Those who clicked on the links and submitted login information to phishing sites allowed Wallace and his associate to then spam the phishing victim’s friends, in turn generating more potential phishing victims. Facebook claims that Wallace also received payment for redirecting some spam recipients to Web sites that pay for referrals.

Facebook asked for damages of $7 billion under the CAN-SPAM act, instead of the only marginally less ridiculous $711 million the judge awarded them. In the end, it doesn’t matter how much the judgment is, since Wallace declared bankruptcy a few months ago.

All is not lost—the spammer could also face jail time for violating a restraining order.

Facebook Wins $711 Million From Spammer [InformationWeek]

(Photo: ivanx)

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